This year, however, has seen a breathing space, a "year of print" (Bookseller), in which the end of the world was postponed yet again. For a nail-biting decade it was said that e-reading would spell death to the traditional book. Actually, the reverse has been true. A body of evidence now suggests that ebooks have actually stimulated the market for hardbacks. Waterstones, once facing meltdown, has returned to profit; independent bookshops are making money. So the seasonal glass turns out to be (just) half full, with all kinds of print flourishing, and the digital tide receding, as the e-boom stalls and hardbacks rally.
Links of the week December 28 2015 (53)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
4 January 2016
This year, however, has seen a breathing space, a "year of print" (Bookseller), in which the end of the world was postponed yet again. For a nail-biting decade it was said that e-reading would spell death to the traditional book. Actually, the reverse has been true. A body of evidence now suggests that ebooks have actually stimulated the market for hardbacks. Waterstones, once facing meltdown, has returned to profit; independent bookshops are making money. So the seasonal glass turns out to be (just) half full, with all kinds of print flourishing, and the digital tide receding, as the e-boom stalls and hardbacks rally.
Your chance to take part in the Costa Short Story Award Public Vote but you need to act by 13 January.
Launched in 2012, the award is for a single, previously unpublished short story, up to 4,000 words in length. It is run in association with the Costa Book Awards but judged independently of the main five-category system.
Open to the scrutiny of the general public via the Costa Book Awards website, the six-strong shortlist includes stories about a nun and a man losing an arm in a logging accident, as well as the story of William Burroughs' wife who was shot by her husband in Mexico City in the 50s. The winner of the award will receive a cheque for £3,500 while authors in second and third place will receive £1,000 and £500 respectively.
The shortlist comprises of "Fallen", "Gerardo Dreams of Chillies", "Rogey", "The Night Office", "To William Burroughs from his Wife" and "Watching the Storms Roll In".
Whittled down to six from over 1,000 entries submitted, each story was judged anonymously by the expert panel without any knowledge of the authors' identities. These same conditions have been extended to the public when they vote on the short stories in the coming weeks. The identities of the authors will be revealed when voting closes on 13th January.
At the end of every year it's traditional for the CEO of Publishing Technology to dust off the crystal ball and look at what's going to happen in publishing over the next twelve months. In previous years we've predicted the rise of mobile reading, which was a hot topic at this year's Futurebook conference in the UK, and that the acid test for ebook subscription will come when the first ‘Netflix for books' service closes its doors, as Oyster did this autumn.
So what does 2016 have in store for the world of trade publishing? Here are our predictions for next year's publishing top trends.
2. More pressure on the midlist as big publishers pursue "winner-takes-all" publishing Another trend we've covered on this blog this year has been how major publishers are reconfiguring themselves as media companies. This move involves publishers tweaking their business model so that their success depends on them successfully exploiting IP across multiple media and formats, not just books. An example of this strategy in action would be Penguin Random House Children's in the UK, which has just appointed Richard Haines into a new role to head up the development of new TV series from its picture books. The potential rewards of creating content that travels across the media are substantial for publishers, but so are the risks. And in order for their investment to pay off, publishers may find themselves even more reliant than ever before on a few best-sellers. There are already indications that this is starting to happen in publishing, with a small number of authors and brands accounting for large proportions of individual publishers' sales. By becoming more reliant on hits, publishers may well become more effective in exploiting those hits across media types. The fall-out may be, however, that some publishers choose to publish fewer books. Next year we will probably see at least one big trade publisher cut their mid-list, and the definition of mid-list will move so that it includes some authors who were minor bestsellers just a few years ago. It's then very possible that these authors will then go on to join the parallel ebook-led publishing market we identified in our first prediction.
The Society of AuthorsThe British authors’ organization, with a membership of over 7,000 writers. Membership is open to those who have had a book published, or who have an offer to publish (without subsidy by the author). Offers individual specialist advice and a range of publications to its members. Has also campaigned successfully on behalf of authors in general for improved terms and established a minimum terms agreement with many publishers. Recently campaigned to get the Public Lending Right fund increased from £5 million to £7 million for the year 2002/2003. Regularly uses input from members to produce comparative surveys of publishers’ royalty payment systems. http://www.societyofauthors.org/ is seeing a number of "once well-known authors" apply for assistance to its Pension Fund, intended to help those who have fallen on hard times - when with fairer contracts allowing rights reversion they could be making an income from their backlist, SoA chief executive Nicola Solomon has said.
Solomon also warned that the relative cheapness of publishing today had brought "a slew of new publishers into the industry" ranging "from the good to the bad and the frankly ugly." Consequently Solomon said that she believed US media lawyer David Vandagriff's description of publishing contracts as "conscience-shocking monstrosities" might "even be an understatement", because of what the SoA had seen in vetting over 1,000 members' contracts a year. "We see many contracts where authors hand over all their rights for no advance and with no guarantee of exploitation by the publisher," she said.
When trends become clear-from self-publishing to writer events to the boutique model of the industry to the re-growth of print sales and large publisher consolidation-I regularly point out in the office that I predicted them two or three years ago. Given that I'm generally met with bemused looks, I thought I would make an official record of some predictions for 2016.
So here, in no particular order, are 10 publishing predictions for the year ahead:
7. Publishers taking advantage of licensing opportunities. I write with a vested interest, of course, owning a global rights licensing marketplace, but what is clear from conversations is that publishers across the world are now seeing the opportunities in licensing. I expect licensing to move from being subsidiary to a core bottom line revenue stream for publishers in 2016.
A crime biography with a page marked outlining a jewellery raid "exactly like Hatton Garden" was found at the home of a man accused of taking part in the £14m heist, a court has heard.
He was asked if he was interested in the Hatton Garden plan he was "engaged in", and responded: "I wasn't engaged in it. If this book is so prevalent in evidence against me why wasn't it forensically examined?"
Mr Stott continued: "It was bookmarked on a page that is exactly what took place in Hatton Garden." He showed him the grey card used to mark the page which Mr Harbinson agreed was probably the back of a book of taxi receipts.
Mr Stott said: "This was your book and you were reading it, weren't you?" to which the accused replied: "No sir."
28 December 2015
The Bookseller's Author Day conference opened this year's FutureBook Week on Monday (30th November). It was the inaugural staging of a conference expressly meant to bring together publishing professionals, traditionally publishing authors, and self-publishing authors. Our term for the conference's intent is "issues-driven," by which we meat that it was not the more commonly staged how-to conference or inspirational gathering for writers.
There is a predictable and deep sense among many writers at the Author Day conference that a commercial motive has vastly outweighed aesthetics and literary meaning in much of publishing. Interestingly, I think it's safe to say that we may hear this more frequently from traditionally publishing authors than from independent authors, perhaps because so many successful indies work in entertainment genres.
Author-centric publishing is a mindset, an attitude for all future-facing members of the publishing community. But more than that-it is a business model for relevant imprints or units, and even more than that a prism-or a decision, if you like-by which larger, multi-purpose publishers can update their approach and systems to develop authors, readers, awareness, channels and, of course, sales.
An author-centric publisher is not just about flowers and parties, updates and niceties. It is a ruthless focus on the journey from writing author to engaged reader.
Well, it's all about the authors isn't it? It's not all down to our design, distribution or marketing skills, is it? It's authors who write the game-changing books. Who slave through three quiet novels to produce one that touches a chord with enough people to make a bestseller. Authors who have hit their stride at an apposite moment, with a publisher who can help them capitalise it, can shape culture. They can become a part of a generation's collective consciousness, spawn movies, merchandise, change habits. Create wealth. Employment. Inspire. Change lives. On and on. No wonder everyone wants in... An author-centric publisher takes what an author knows about the reader's interests and lives, and works it really, really hard.
When did you first know you were going to be a writer?
From the age of about five or six, writing was my main hobby and pretty much the only thing I was interested in doing. I never wanted to do any of my school work. Stories and poems were what I wanted to do instead.
Does being a poet feed the crime writing or vice versa? Or do you feel the two hats don't even belong on the same hatstand?
I think the themes that I am interested in writing about are similar in my crime fiction and in my poetry. I want to write about people, the way they behave, their psychology, the whole gamut of relationships - romantic partnerships, family, friendships. Even formally, I think poetry and crime fiction have a lot in common. In a tightly plotted crime novel and a highly metrical poem, for instance, structure is crucially important. Every single element has to be in the right balance and proportion to everything else. I am a real structure freak and I think that's one of the reasons both poetry and crime fiction appeal to me.
The absence of any black, Asian or minority ethnic writers on next year's World Book Night list provoked an outcry and a Twitterstorm. We asked writers and leading figures within the industry what can be done to encourage greater diversity in British publishing.
Nikesh Shukla, writer Latest work: Meatspace (Friday Project) I'm writing this hoping it'll be my last piece on diversity in publishing. I am tired. Tired of fighting for representation for writers of colour, pushing for more black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people to be in positions of management in the industry. I am tired of sitting on panels about diversity, writing pieces about diversity, and tweeting about prizes, review coverage and lists that ignore diversity. Which is why I lost my patience at the end of November when the titles announced for the 2016 World Book Night - when free books are distributed to encourage reading - failed to include a single BAME author. It might seem heartless to criticise a brilliant charity for wanting to put books in the hands of non-readers, and, in response, World Book Night expressed frustration that no publishers had put forward any BAME writers.
NAIROBI: The 5th biennial Kwani? Litfest took place in Nairobi from December 1 through 6th. It was themed Beyond the Map of English: Writers in Conversation on Language, and hosted both local and international writers at different venues around the city. Two books were launched in the course of the event, Nurrudin Farah's 12th novel Hiding in Plain Sight and the Kwani? 08 journal, which is largely predicated on politics and language.
For me, two writers stole the show: Nurrudin Farah and Taiye Selasi. Nurrudin (pronounced Noo-roo-dean) is a Somali-born 2feminist and nationalist writer" and author of 12 novels. He started his writing career at the age of 9 by writing letters on behalf of adults (in three languages) in order to earn pocket money. In 1970, at the age of only 22, he wrote the seminal novel From a Crooked Rib. Centering on a young girl who flees an arranged marriage to an old man, it is highly esteemed by feminists and remains one of Africa's towering novels. He left a socio-politically intolerant Somalia in 1974.
When Rebecca Thornton got the debut novel jitters, a community of Bonnier authors came to her help.
I'd harboured dreams of being a novelist for years. I wrote, pretty much all that time. Mainly in secret. Mainly when my career wasn't quite right, i.e. always, or I felt at a crossroads in my life. "Oh, I know," I would think, "I'll write a book. It'll be totally easy and it'll change everything." It wasn't, and at that point it didn't.
It was in my mid-30s that I felt courageous enough to admit this to people. I was often met with a look that translated as: "Good luck with that one," (they were right) or, more commonly, "I'm writing one too." This all coincided with having my first child. I used to go out to parties all the time, but after I gave birth, I found I didn't want to. Now is the time to go for this hell for leather, I thought. The first step was being open about what I was doing. Owning the fact that I wanted to write. I applied to the Faber Academy Writing A Novel course, and after some disastrous attempts at a romantic comedy, one of my course mates suggested I try writing in the first person. With that came the voice for The Exclusives, and after that my amazing agent, Nelle Andrew.